


Drift Ice

by rin0rourke



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble Collection, M/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-05-03 13:40:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14570199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rin0rourke/pseuds/rin0rourke
Summary: Bits and bobs and drabbles, pieces to fics I may never write and things I've done for prompts.





	1. Chapter 1

The oblong pool was rock bottomed and clear as glass, undisturbed by ripples from any discernible current. Egg shaped indentations lined the sides, each so precisely uniform in shape and distance between that they could not be natural.    
  
A well then, a strange, shallow, egg shaped well.   
  
Jack cupped his hands in the near invisible water and drank deep, letting that coil of power tied to water unfurl out to taste.   
  
The water was warm in his cold hands and cool on his lips, on his tongue he tasted the earth, sandstone, but the minerals were silent in their age, the water pulled from too deep, too long ago. It had forgotten itself.   
  
"Where does it come from?" he asked, his eyes opening to look at Bunny, lounging so deceptively casual against a moss cloaked boulder painting his egg, but his ears were very stiffly pointed towards him. As if waiting for Jack to attempt some sabotage, pull some stunt.   
  
"Confined aquifer, coupla kilometers under the Yarragadee."   
  
Miles, miles under sandstone and siltstone and shale, unreplenished by the rainfall that seeped into the upper deposit. "It must be very old." Too old to ever remember being a rainstorm or glacier, too old to be anything but quiet and confined.   
  
"About 50 thousand years I reckon."   
  
His own aquifer was just as deep, just as old in places, but it was not confined, it's water table touched the surface in wells and springs, his own lake a constant point of contact. His aquifer brought him drops that remembered people and places he could never reach, water that had sprayed playfully from the trunk of a mammoth, that had pooled at the foot of a glacier, water too that had bathed a tribe of humans, felt a child's first excited kicks, and tasted the last breath of an alligator’s prey, water with history and tragedy and humour. His aquifer searched out every drop with a scrap of memory, to fill the void in his heart with the voices of millions before him.   
  
His aquifer remembered him, loved him, this water remembered and loved nothing.   
  
Solitude could destroy you, if it stretched on long enough.   



	2. Mwëshao

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This and the previous drabble are discarded future scenes for Athiluhakan that never quite fit into the outline. While the series is slow going, as all important works involving genocide should be, this side story never did leave me alone.

_"The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,_  
_White as a knuckle and terribly upset._  
_It drags the sea after it like a dark crime."_

_Sylvia Plath_

_*_

So, this was how it ended?

“Back. Off.” Jack’s voice was as cold and flat as the frozen lake firmly beneath his feet, coupled with his blistering wind and the dangerous direction he brandished his staff it left very little room for argument.

But this was Bunny, arguing with Jack was what he did.

“Jack, mate, move away.”

It had been a nice few years, some of his best, but he had always known it couldn’t last. “Not happening.”

“Jack,” North’s voice was soft and placating, “you don’t understand, that is Wendigo, they-”

“I know what a Wendigo is.” Jack snapped, eyes blazing blue power, “and she’s a Cheenoo, actually, and she’s mine.”

“Jack, I know you're territorial, but this thing, it-” Tooth tried to reach out to him but the Wind shoved her back, back to her side, the Guardians’ side. Just like that first night in the Globe room, they on one side and he on the other.

“SHE hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“She killed someone!” Tooth raged.

Jack’s eyes, blue as the sun through a glacier, slid sideways to the ragged looking monstrosity beside him. She was a hideously pitiful thing of gray wrinkled skin and jutting bones,her deceptively frail limbs were attached to swollen bulbous joints, her sagging breasts were limp deflated sacks against her ribcage, the sheet she had used to cover herself torn and bloody from the wound North had scored across her shoulder hung at her sharp bony hips. She ducked her head at Jack’s blazing stare, shrinking away, her scraggly hair falling in matted heaps in front of her sunken eyes. “She hasn’t killed,” Jack’s voice was firm, he looked back to the others, widening his stance and bracing to defend.

“She left three bodies at a camp!” Tooth’s wings flared dangerously, the edges sharp as glass and strong as diamond she charged. “All children, children Jack, I SAW HER!”

“I KNOW HER.” Jack met Tooth halfway, stepping in front of the Cheenoo and blocking the spinning blow that would have taken the bent, cowering creature’s head off. Tooth’s wing bit deep into the crook of Jack’s staff and Jack froze it in place, following her dervish with a twist of his own until he had her pinned to the ground, his staff caught in her wings his knee firmly on her back. “DONT!” Jack shouted at the others who moved in to stop them. “Come closer and I will freeze you all where you stand. It won’t kill you, but it will hurt.” More than them. It would hurt to do it, but he would, to defend his own. He felt the bite of Tooth’s sharp wings into TwineTender as if it were his own flesh, his chest constricted from the pain.

Tooth struggled to shove him off, whipping her head back and spitting out snow. She could slice through Jack’s staff like sheeres through a green sapling, she could disarm Jack permanently and they could destroy the cannibal creature he defended, she could live with hurting her friend, Jack knew, just as he could live with hurting her. They were both first and foremost the feral forest raised animal. Of the Guardians Jack had always felt Tooth was the most like him.

“Listen to me.” Jack said, and his voice softened as he tried to explain, Sachem to Queen. “I said before that I rule Winter here, right?”

“Yes.” Tooth huffed, flexing her hands in the snow, Jack weighed more than he looked, and Tooth had long sacrificed her strength of body for strength of numbers.

“Well, part of that means looking after the monsters.” Jack shifted his weight, “I’m going to let you up, and I need to know that you’re not going to try for her again, I’ll explain why I promise, but right now just trust me that I know she hasn’t killed anyone.” Jack looked back at his fellow Guardians, his friends for now and said “Please.”

North and Bunny looked at each other in that way of old comrades, they had explained once that they could communicate without speaking and Jack wondered if that was what they did, some silent strategy, then they nodded, sheathing their weapons. He didn’t know if they really agreed, or simply was placating him to get at the Cheenoo, but for now he would give them what he asked of them. Trust.

It was not something they would give him after, he knew. But he had always known that. It had only been a matter of time, and 8 years had been far longer than he had ever hoped.

Above them Sandy floated down, his cloud heavy with death. He looked between the Guardians, obvious confusion on his face making the question mark above his head unnecessary.

“Jack was just about to explain,” Bunny informed him, “why he’s defending a bloody cannibal.”

“Because she's innocent,” Jack snapped, getting off of Tooth. She sat up, dusting herself off and adjusting her wings. It was a risk for Jack to back off and trust her with his staff. He so rarely let it go, he had never explained TwineTender, or their bond. To her and the others it was just a stick, a focus through which he directed his erratic power, only Pitch had ever seen his connection. With a quick careful flutter of wings it dropped safely to the snow and she rose into the air, but didn't drift far. Just back to the others, back to her side.

Like that first night at the Pole.

The similarity wouldn’t leave him. It fit, didn’t it? To end it as it began? Jack reached down, not, as they assumed, to retrieve his staff. He wouldn’t arm himself if they didn’t. Did they realize how difficult it was? To leave his closest friend injured on the ground? Instead he scooped up two handfuls of snow and blew onto it.

North and Bunny closed in, obviously still tense, warily eyeing the bent winter monster as Jack approached her. Even without their weapons there was a threatening air to them, unlike Jack who had left his staff where it lie they could easily all rearm themselves.

Bunny watched Jack carefully, prepared for the moment the Cheenoo would strike. It looked pathetic, curled into itself and pressing one talon tipped hand to its still bleeding shoulder. Surprisingly it did not lash out when Jack reached out to it, his small pale hand a shocking contrast to the unhealthy gray skin. The creature whimpered, and nosed at Jack, gaunt, freeze dried skin pulled tight to its misshapen head so that it's too many too large teeth jutted out from layers that could have been lips or could have been gums.

Bunny might have felt pity for it, but his eyes slid to the small bodies on Sandy’s dream cloud and his heart hardened.

“In Winter,” Jack began, pressing his blue snow to the injury the Cheenoo offered him, “there's a curse. I don't know it's origins, or all of the rules to it, but the result is the same. You turn into a starving monster.” Jack pet the matted hair of the creature as he spoke, and it sounded like it sobbed. “There's lots of ways you can be cursed, no one knows really how it spreads, it's not really something anyone can cast. It just.. is. It's part of Winter, and as far as I know only those with indigenous blood are affected.” The snow melted quickly, as if it wasn’t pressed between two winter spirits. The thick black blood had stopped and the gash was already freezing and curling at the edges, it would become a leathery mummified flap soon, encrusted in ice and peeling away.

“The heart is the most important part of a Winter spirit, it's why most stories say you have to destroy it. Winter in America is hard and cruel and without mercy, but the people are not. Winter is the time everyone is supposed to be kind to each other. If you aren’t...” Jack continued stroking the Cheenoo’s head even after the snowball had completely melted, not looking at the others as he told them. “If you let your heart go cold, Winter claims it. Claims you. You become this creature, this perfect embodiment of Winter, cold and hard and merciless. Always cold, always starving, always hungering for the warmth of humanity.”

He faced them now, the Monster beside him on display for what she truly was, his victim. “A Cheenoo is someone who was not kind, this woman was one of many in a city who rejected a shelter for temporary housing being extended through the Winter. Hundreds of people without homes were evicted from a community center into the snow. The only difference between her and everyone else in that town was she was Indian.”

Jack couldn’t help but laugh, and it was cruel of him but it was also funny. “She didn’t even know it.” he said. “Just another white woman claiming heritage she had no right too, she didn’t actually think she was Indian, and she certainly wasn’t Cherokee.” The Guardians were looking at him in disbelief, but that was fine, he had expected that. Had already steeled himself for their disgust at his nature. “She was Nanticoke, so little she could have bled it out from a pricked finger, but she had called herself Indian and that was all that mattered. Winter took her for its own, and now she pays her debt.”

“Jack…” Tooth watched him warily, “I saw her, with the children. She was going to eat them.”

“She’s a cannibal isn’t she?” Jack’s smile was cruel, he knew it was but he didn’t care. What was the point? “A Cheenoo can be saved, if they haven’t killed they can be called back to humanity. A person who is kind enough, and brave enough can attempt to thaw their frozen heart. Once they’ve taken another’s life though, they’re lost.” he looked at the monster again, into her sunken tortured eyes and declared, “Then they belong to me, and I kill them.”

He sighed, and pushed away from the creature, walking back to his staff. She staggered, physically unbalanced at the loss of his touch. To them, the monsters of Winter, he was the only kindness they knew. “If she had killed she’d be a wild uncontrollable beast, she was scavenging, that’s all.”

“But Jack…” North watched him warily, and it hurt but he knew it would, “children?”

“They’re dead aren’t they?” He asked, and North winced. Was that his voice? Those cold, emotionless words, were they his? “Someone murdered those girls, but that someone was human. All they are now is meat.”

“How can you say that?” Tooth asked, a pained desperation in her voice. “They were people, they had hopes and dreams and memories. That didn’t end because they died!”

“Yes it did.” Jack scooped up his staff, his chest throbbing from the injury it had sustained. His answer seemed to shock them, and when he turned back it was like that time, that Easter 8 years ago. No one could look at him.

Ending as it began.

And just like then when he flew off no one stopped him. 

At least his monster had gotten away safely. 

*

There was no good or evil to Winter.

Jack skated across Chimney Pond, TwineTender skimming the ice beside him Gichi Biboon’s words in his mind as he explained their Nature. Human’s considered them evil, but they were merely surviving. Humans hunted for food, for skins to make clothing and shelter, bones to make trinkets and tools.

Jack had been sitting on a rock outcropping beside the much larger spirit, casually picking at his meal. The Ice Cannibals had brought him deer that morning, laying the carcases at his feet and he had wept at the sight of their sweet gentle bodies bloodied and lifeless. He had been so young, and Pamola’s children dismissive of his dispair. Only the Great Winter had the understanding to explain that Pamola’s family hunted by avalanche, and ate everything caught in the chaos, even humans.

Jack had had an affinity for the monsters of Winter even then, unafraid and gentle with the horrific creatures even Flint and Shakok despised. He had not understood until the snow at his feet was stained red the reason the Cannibals were treated with such disgust.

Still he had wanted to help them. Stupid, naive little Icicle Frost.

‘That didn’t end because they died’

What did Tooth know? Hadn’t his hopes, his dreams, and yes his memories vanished with his death? His brothers, his sisters, his mother, the old woman who had carved TwineTender so skillfully, surely they had mourned his loss, but he had cared nothing for them, and now it was too late. They were dust motes in the tomb of history, not even a gravestone to mark their time on this earth. No records, no clues, they had likely gone the way all of the indians did, rounded up and removed from the town he had called his own. Few of the original Hawthorne indians had remained when the coal miners had come to build their cabins on the bank of the river. Who among them had been his family? He hadn’t the faintest of ideas.

His memories, his human memories were so faded, like images of a story he had once heard. Only the few key moments preserved by Tooth were clear, bright illuminated points of moonlight in a shadowed past.

His time under Flint’s tutelage was more corporeal than them.

He glided to the edge of the pond, not slowing his momentum at all as he reached the end of the ice and let himself fall into the snowbank.

He felt more than heard the approach.

“What do you want?” He asked, voice muffled by the snow.

“To not be in the bleeding cold, for one.” Ah, so it was Bunny. He had expected North, who fancied himself Jack’s counselor and confident. Which, okay he kind of was, but at the moment he didn’t think he could handle North’s low comforting words. If there were any left for him to say after what Jack had told them.

“Well tough,” Jack rolled over onto his back and looked up at his furry companion, shivering in the wind. He could divert the wind around Bunny, alleviate some of his discomfort, but honestly he didn’t have the will. The more uncomfortable Bunny was, the more quickly he would storm off and leave Jack to his renewed loneliness. “It’s your choice to be here.”

“Think ye could just give yer little lecture and fly off?” Bunny bent down, it was an odd posture for him but he was already up to his knees in the snow and wasn’t going to crouch and freeze his tail off. “If we let ya run off and mope who knows when we’d see ya again.”

“If I’d known you’d follow me, I’d have gone to Anarctica.”

“No ye wouldn’tve.” Jack sat up and glared at him. “Its November, ye have too much work to go running South and besides,” Bunny reached his hand out to help Jack up from his hole. “Ye want someone to chase ya.”

“Excuse me?” Jack’s voice cracked, dragging his insulted voice up a gurgled octave. He tried to snatch his hand back but Bunny held it firm, tugging him up and he had the choice to stand with dignity or be drug like a petulant child. Jack had no qualms about being petulant nor childish but he did have pride, and he knew from the quirk of Bunny’s lips that any antics he put on would only end in embarrassment for him.

“When I say leave me alone, I mean it.” Bunny said, and he almost felt disappointed when Jack stood willingly. “So I can tell when someone wants t’be left alone, and when they want someone to try harder. Ye,” he prodded Jack in the chest with an accusatory finger, “Ye want someone to try.”

“No.” Jack said between his teeth, shaking Bunny’s hand on his, “I don’t. I want to be left alone.”

“An that’s why ye look ready to cry.” Bunny reach out to touch his cheek and Jack flinched back, turning away from him and facing the mountain. Bunny let him, he knew he had already won, and Jack knew it too.

Damn him, Jack thought, why couldn’t he be as blind as he had always been. Blind and cursing and hateful. It wasn’t fair that Bunnymund could see him so clearly, when he himself remained a mystery to Jack.

“I remember building this mountain.” Bunny said conversationally, “Back then the Earth was still shaped like a goog, and I hadn’t the heart t'change it fully. Still wanted t'move the continents some, to figure out where I was going to put all the excess land. There was a god I think, one o'the first, beat his wings to create winds before Emily Jane took over the systems.”

Jack felt tears prick his eyes. “Pamola," he whispered, “he used to cause hurricanes, so Hare tied him up.”

“That’s the one, I thought he broke his wing?”

“Accidentally, in the fight. By the time Moskim came to set him free it had mended wrong, Pamola could never create winds the same.”

“Worked out in the end, gentler winds.”

Jack studied Bunny, who looked back to him with steady, serious eyes. “Yeah,” he managed around the sudden constriction in his throat, “yeah, it did.”

They were all hurting people, good and bad. They were all someone else's monsters.

*

 _"and in a few fatal yards of grass_  
_in a few spaces of sky and treetops_

 _a future was lost yesterday_  
_as easily and irretrievably_  
_as a tennis ball at twilight"_

_Sylvia Plath_


	3. Winds of Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gender swap ahead, prompt for rule 63, so gender swap and minor mpreg mentions (because jack with a vjay is still a guy)

"This," Jack said through his teeth, "is crossing the line."   
  
At his bedside Tooth made sympathetic noises, the males had long since fled. Cowards, the lot of them.   
  
"I have to say, I'm glad I don't have this problem." Tooth said, and Jack squinted up at her, not hard considering his head was in her lap. "I just lay an egg, it hurts, and I'm bloated for a week beforehand, but it's over fast."   
  
Jack's squint turned into a glare. "No bragging when I'm bleeding to death."   
  
"Oh honey," She smoothed his hair and he struggled not to shift, he'd finally gotten into a position that didn't feel like some big predator was making a meal of his guts. "You've just a heavy flow is all, give it a few days."   
  
"I don't want to give it DAYS" his voice edged embarrassing close to whining but he was beyond caring. "Why did they have to attack ME? What did I do to them?"   
  
"You're dating our Bunny." Tooth reminded him, tapping his nose when he pouted.    
  
They'd covered this ground already, two weeks ago when he'd first been cursed by the group of rogue old gods, fertility gods, who had some pretty regressive ideas of what made a good match for their Avatar of Spring.    
  
Ideas involving ovaries. Ovaries that hated him as much as he did them apparently because not a dozen days into the mad search to turn him back they'd gone and attacked him.   
  
A fail safe, he was sure, a self destruct button to take him out of the hunt. Bastards.   
  
"Bad enough the boobs without the booby traps." He complained again.    
  
"They aren't that bad," Tooth grinned at his very scary sounding growl. "We're lucky its months before Christmas, and that North had a binder in your size." Which had been educational to learn the yeti could make. Tooth cocked her head like an inquisitive bird at his, currently unbound due to recent self destructive organs, breasts. "A little excessive."   
  
Of course it was, they were made by fucking fertility gods, not warriors like Tooth. He crossed his arms over his stupid squishy chest and glared at hers in return, more plumage than breast. "Jealous? "   
  
"Absolutely not," she laughed, "they're not very aerodynamic."   
  
"Tell me about it." And the bouncing HURT, noone said they would hurt. "And, and!" He waved a hand in the air dramatically, "I hit myself with my stalf, TWICE!"   
  
Tooth laughed again, the traitor. "Well, at least they aren't permanent. We'll figure this out, we always do."   
  
Jack took comfort in that. That even if they didn't find the gods and force them to reverse this, at least North and Aster would try to fix it themselves. Plus there's always the good old fashioned mortal way. He wasn't the first guy stuck in a woman's body.   
  
"Do you suppose they were aiming for an Easter baby?" Tooth asked, changing the subject.    
  
Jack snorted, and oh his tummy hurt. "Because the first thing Bunny and I would do upon discovering I had a vagina is the nasty."   
  
This time when Tooth giggled Jack felt better about it. "Can you imagine Easter prep though? With you pregnant in the Warren? He'd be a nervous wreck, zooming around like he's," She covered her face and laughed just thinking about it. "Like the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland."   
  
Jack laughed too, because it really was just like Aster to be an absolute disaster during his holiday, expecting babies would DESTROY him.    
  
How to ruin easter in 9 months or less.    
  
He and Tooth giggled over his supposed future pregnancy, and other weird girlish things Jack was only now experiencing, for some time, until Jack soon found the cramps and headache had passed and he could sit up without  being dizzy.    
  
Which was good, because he was eager to get back out there and try to beat the tar out of some devine old farts.


	4. Pursuit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prologue to an old idea involving fascist Guardians who chose to police the world instead of only influencing belief, brought on by Pitch curupting Sandy (like the movie) during the final battle, and Bunny going berserk and killing him, but becoming infected by the fearlings and "dying". It was for the Bunny becomes the new nightmare king trope, and pretty much followed the movie excepting that Bunny is the "good guy" and the Guardians need to be taken down a peg. 
> 
> Jack is fleeing Tooth, because he knocked out Jamie's baby tooth and fears retribution. It's the "capture and take to the Pole" scene.
> 
> I just.. never really got far into this fic, the plot outline grew too big and I have too many large projects, but I like Jack's thought process here.

Please.

It was a constant mantra in his head, a chant in time with the tribal drums of his heartbeat in his ears.

Please, please, please.

He was diving too fast, too too fast, but to adjust his speed would be to risk capture, he'd risk impact before that, he'd crashed before, seen others crash, he knew what to expect.

He'd rather hit ground than trees, then at least it would be quick.

It's not like in the movies.

Hell, is it ever like in the movies? It's so much worse. So much worse.

Blood slopped down bark and branches like thick black tree sap. God, oh god. The trees could be lethal, could break bones, snap your neck like a dry dead limb if you hit them gliding in.

But falling? The lush beautiful canopy that looked so thick, so much like a great green cloud from above, became a pit of spikes, branches didn't have to be sharp to impale you, to skewer you through your soft spots and leave you for the wild things to whimper in hunger at from their place far below you on the ground.

If you're lucky the trees kill you. You don't have to bleed out in that place of beauty and pain.

Jack had maybe spent a few not so comfortable hours, slipping in and out of consciousness after a bad fall.

The wind flung him to the left of a tree with teeth-rattling force, and he struggled not to tumble, not to tuck and curl against the blow and hinder his speed. He would not sacrifice velocity for saftey. He could take the curves.

He twisted through low hanging branches and around trunks, black lines in the dark, trusting the wind to see him through them safely. The leaves rustled, slapped hard by his passing, promising him protection, cover, but their interlocking branches would only hinder his flight more, while doing little to block his persuers.

A humm to his right, the wind snapped him up, through an opening in a net of thick vines, and he was in the leaves, small branches slapping his face and shoulders, catching on his clothes, before dipping back to the undercanopy.


	5. Run Run Rudoulf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of an AU I've done with Proser involving a morally bankrupt Tyrant of Winter Jack Frost.

Jack studied the pretty red envelope, enjoying the striking contrast it made with the bleak greys and fogged white of his front parlor. There were many rooms in his fortress designed to intimidate, and this one was his favourite, everything ice, not lovely colorful ice, but hard, severe, unattractive blocks cut into seats. Jack dropped the temperature a few more degrees, his guest looked far too comfortable, and broke the wax seal between his thumbs.   
  
He didn't know, or particularly care for, the Guardians of Childhood. Bunnymund was the only one he had ever been able to stand, and even he was far too fucking sanctimonious. If they didn't have to deal with each other every season change he imagined they would have a much more violent relationship.   
  
Pity. He would have enjoyed such a feud.   
  
He took his time reading over the pretty embossed card with it's gold leaf and holly in the corners, longer than a simple invitation warranted. The Yeti standing, looming really, in his doorway looked unimpressed.

"You can tell St. North that I would LOVE to attend his christmas party, but Winter is far too busy for me, I'll have to decline," Jack instructed the Yeti, who mumbled something derogatory sounding and left. 

Jack watched him, if it was a him, leave, and considered sending a party gift, heavy fog sounded fun, and he did have to wonder if there really did exist a red nosed reindeer…

And it would put Bunnymund’s stupid flat nose right out of joint. 


	6. It grows on you

His shoulderblades itched.

"What are ye doing Frost?"

"Expressing curriosity?" Bunny turned from thinning the reeds along his river to squint into the trees, trying to pin point where the voice, and watchful eyes, were coming from.

"Express it elsewhere."

A huff, and Jack slipped down from his perch in the trees to one of the boulders nearby. Bunny's ears twitched in annoyance, and he barely restrained the angry snarl. The demand to leave.

It was annoying enough to feel himself tugged into a working companionship with the sprite that had been a relentless pest for more than a century, his personal time outside of Guardian Duties should have been off limits. But the others were insisting on reconnecting, and making Jack welcome in particular. Digging his heels in had so far only made him look immature and mean.

He wasn't above being mean, particularly when it was deserved, but when Jack was sitting on a mossy boulder doing nothing more than watch him and smile...

He shook himself, turning his attention back to the weed choked bank. He was trying to forget what that focused stare did to him. He ripped up a thick soggy clump of grass with more force than he meant to, churning rich black mud into the pastel water.

It wasn't either of their faults, he certainly hadn't expected this, this WANT, this desire for Jack Frost of all creatures. It had just grown, like a fungus between them, below their surfaces, beneath their view, until everything Jack did had started setting him off again in entirely new ways.

He knew his sudden backward slide into frustration and anger was hurting his professional relationship with the sprite. Was... was hurting Jack, his feelings...

Bunnymund told himself and everyone else often enough that he didn’t give half a damn what Jack bloody Frost thought of him. Finding out how much he actually did wasn't just surprising, it was down right pissing him off.

He took in a breath, let the anger out in a long blow, and set the clump aside with the pile. He could still feel Jack watching him, somehow completely unaware of the effect he had.

Bunny turned to glance at him, beginning with the blackening frost and lichen on the boulder at his pale bare feet where filamentous layers of frost fanned out like hyphae. He felt that lust, like the frost, like the branching mass of mycelia, reaching out to him the instant he looked.

"If yer gonna be here," Bunny invited, "ye might as well be useful. Stop killin me moss and come frost these weeds."

Uncontrolled, unrestricted would these feelings, like the fungus and the frost, destroy what it touched?

Jack's smile, slow curl of that soft cruel mouth, and he knew he wouldn't care if it did.


	7. Snared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Spies/espionage

“Oh, this must be _so_ embarrassing.”

“Bloody oath.” Aster screwed his eyes shut and concentrated, very **very** hard, on regaining control of himself. He couldn’t afford to lose his shapeshift, not here, not in front of **him.**

****A cold hand against his hip and he was being turned, looking up, and how he hated looking up at anyone, at Jack Frost.

 His ears pinned themselves to his head against his will, the runes carved into the maintenance shaft he dangled in doing their work to force him back to his true form. He clung to it, dug his claws into his palms like they were all that kept him from plummeting off this cliff into utter humiliation, and met Jack eyeball to eyeball.

 Jack just grinned at him. “This is the third time this year cottontail. How many traps you gonna fall in?”

 Aster felt his torso clench around the insult, felt it vibrate through his gut and into his chest like a muscle cramp. “I’m sorry,” he tried for banter, “are we supposed to know each other?”

 Jack huffed out his stupid breathy giggle and gave him another good nudge to the thigh, sending him slowly twirling on the line that he hung from. “Aw, am I so forgettable? I know its been a few months but that still hurts.”

 Aster tried to rotate the ankle caught in the trapline, if he could wiggle it down to catch on his heel he could slip it when he shifted, then he could kick Jack in the fucking face. “I don’t know what yer talkin about.” He lied.

 “Come **on** Bunny,” Jack crouched so they really were eye too eye cupping the sides of his face to keep him from spinning round again, “do you really think I wouldn’t recognize you the **moment** I saw you?” He tapped his ice cold fingertip to Aster’s pointed human nose and grinned. “You can change the shape and color of those pretty green eyes of yours, but you can’t change the look in them,” Jack’s own eyes went dark, like a storm shadowing blue skies, Aster felt his pulse kick against his throat, “no one looks at me like you do.”

 “Fine.” He croaked out, and let his shift go, felt bones and muscle and organs move back to their proper place under the powerful guidance of the complicated spellwork around him and the careful support of Jack’s hands under his head. It was a good trap, he admitted, using the protective runes shapeshifters had perfected to assist their young in training, Bunny knew more than a few of those carvings were Pookan in origin, and could only guess how the Winter Palace security had figured them out. “Happy now?” He demanded as he dangled, still by his ankle though considerably closer to the ground, he could feel the line biting harder into his skin.

 “To look at you? Always.” Jack had knelt with his shifting, adjusting to the lengthening of his body so that Aster’s head and shoulders rested in his lap while the rest of him was still strung up like a hunter’s catch.

 “Then hows`about untying me foot?” He snapped, “Kinda loosing feeling here mate.”

 “Aww, but I thought you liked that kind of thing?” Jack smirked down at him, sliding his thumb over the fur markings on his forehead. “Or did you just like it when it was me?” He curled over Aster, sinking teeth sharply into his lower lip and making the Pooka jolt, sending his body swaying. “You were real interested when you had my hands pinned.”

 “Yer mad,” Aster snarled, twisting and wriggling to try to get some inches between their mouths so he could speak, so he could breath without the taste of him.

 “I’m not the one that keeps showing back up here.” Jack leaned back, licking his lip in a dramatic fashion and Aster knew he was doing it unnerve him, knew by that predatory grin.

 “It’s me job ye fuck stick,” he snarled, “I’m not dangling from yer bogan trapline for fun.”

 “Hmmm, but you could be.” Jack hummed sweetly, continuing to stroke Aster’s face from nose to just between the ears. “If you just stopped trying to sneak around, you and your other little shapeshifters, and knocked like a normal, non-crazy-paranoid person, you could have all kinds of fun, get a nice little tour.”

 “Did that the first time, remember?” Aster snapped, then shut his mouth with a clack because he knew that Jack remembered, they both very much remembered, and that sly dangerous smile only grew.

 “How could I forget?” Jack flicked his nose, hard, and Aster knew there was as much threat as promise in his voice. “It was certainly a memorable way to lose my virginity.”

 Which had not at all been in Aster’s plans, he admitted to that readily enough, seducing his tour guide had been a quick, hurried last minute plan when he and the other Guardians had realized they would never be allowed close to their actual objective, but Jack being a virgin had not occurred to him in the least, not until an embarrassing amount of time later when his fertility magic had spiked and sent his herb garden to seed. He… hadn’t handled the discovery well.

 Probably about as well as Jack had when North had tripped an alarm and Jack had woken to an empty bed and a full dungeon.

 “But if you’re having memory troubles…” Jack’s long fingers carded through the thick fur across Aster’s chest.

 “Don’t even think about it mate.” He growled, not liking how creaky his voice sounded at the offer. He snagged Jack’s hand and held it pointedly out to the side of them.

 “Hmm, you know I actually don’t think I can STOP thinking about it.” Jack laughed, and oh his laugh did things to Aster’s guts he’d rather not investigate too closely. “Considering I never gave it much thought before you…”

 “Only so many times ye can use that guilt trip on me,” Aster warned, “cop a root one time and ye think ye own a fella.”

 “You should come with a dictionary,” Jack laughed again and left off the distracting strokes of his fingers across Aster’s forehead, which he absolutely would not admit to enjoying, and picked his staff up beside them, arching up and giving it a good swing at the trapline, nocking smartly against Aster’s ankle in the process.

 He hissed, then cursed as his lower body dropped down to join the rest of him against the floor but without the cushion of Jack’s thighs. He probably should have been prepared for the drop, but the line of Jack’s throat when he reached up with the staff had been a bit of a distraction.

 Just a little.

The cunt. 

“You okay?” Jack asked, with real concern this time after Bunny laid there sprawled and aching for an swear filled half minute.

 “No, ye sadistic bastard, I’m not. Ye couldn’t have warned a bloke? My whole body went numb and ye just smacked it against the bleeding ice.”

 “Sorry,” Jack carefully shifted off his knees to stretch his legs out along Aster’s sides, bringing his neck into a more comfortable angle with the rest of his spine. “I didn’t think your body would have fallen asleep.”

 “Was hanging upside down in the bleeding arctic an ye didn’t think-” he hissed as he rotated his ankle and felt the needle sharp flare of nerves remembering how to function. “Next time just cut me loose instead of taking the opportunity to grope me.

 “Hey! You could have been hanging a lot longer if I hadn’t been watching for you, you know.” Jack tugged on one of his ears and Bunny glared up at him. “And I was **not** groping.”

 “Yer groping right now ye little -ow!” Jack gave his ear another sharp pull.

 “You’re being awfully nasty to your rescuer.”

 “Yer only helping me cuz ye want me to dick ya.”

 “So?” Bunny blinked at that flat admission, giving Jack a slack-faced stare. “What’s wrong with that? I'm obviously attracted to you, and you’re obviously not very good at sneaking around.” Jack’s voice sounded a bit sulky, and his eyes slid to the side, not meeting Bunny’s gaze for the fist time since he’d seduced the sprite into taking him beyond the guest areas, into the vulnerable interior of the winter palace, and his equally vulnerable body. It was such a soft, fragile look, this shy uncertainty, not something Aster had ever seen in a Winter Spirit before.

 Not something he expected from Jack again.

 “What are ye getting at Frost?” He took a breath and lifted his head out of Jack’s lap and turned so that they were both sitting face to face.

 Jack tucked his legs closer, but didn’t look back at him. “Just… wouldn’t it be easier? If you had... you know, an inside man?” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “You guys keep trying to sneak in, and I don’t know why but I’m not so **stupid** I don’t know the Guardian’s wouldn’t be looking around if there wasn’t serious shit going on. I…”

 “And… ye want to help?” Bunny prompted when Jack fell silent.

 “I’m scared.” Jack admitted, quiet as a whisper. “Sometimes, when I’m out during winter, doing my job, or when I’m sent somewhere, I start thinking about you, and I start worrying that you’re… that you’ve come sneaking in again and gotten trapped and I’m not here to get you **out** of it.”  

 That… _**what?**_

 “Is that why ye keep pelting we with snowballs?” He demanded.

 “Well yeah! That’s what you get for making me worry!” Jack looked back at him now and his blue eyes were blazing. “Do you even know how hard it is to find you to make sure you’re safe? And you’re just… just out picking flowers!”

 “That’s-” Bunny felt his air back up in his throat, the way it did when he was forced to ride in North’s sleigh. “I’m… sorry.” He said slowly, and careful as if he was reaching out to a touch shy animal, curled his fingers around Jack’s hand. “I always thought it was just payback, for... ye’know, acting like a wombat.”

 “A what?”

 “Ah.. ye’know… a wombat.” Jack’s face scrunched up and Aster grinned a bit self-deprecating. “Ye’know… I.. they.. a wombat eats, roots, shoots, and leaves.”

 “I know what a wombat is, but I don’t see.. you’re a _bunny_ though aren’t you?”

 “Pooka.” Aster corrected, and Jack only looked more confused. “Forget it, it’s a.. just means I was acting like an ass, having a lend of ye to get past the guards, and giving ya the flick like that after we.. it wasn’t right, and then dismissing ye as just trying to get some of yer own back.” Aster stroked his thumb across the back of Jack’s knuckles. “Ye showing up when I’m in a bind, grinning like a shot fox, guess I preferred to think ye were just like the rest of ‘em.”

 “We’re not bad people Bunny,” Jack looked so very sad, staring down at their joined hands, “we’re just **Winter,** same as the other seasons.”

 “Maybe not, but ye lot are in it pretty thick with the Snow Queen.”

 “Not by **choice,”** Jack muttered.

  _Oh._

  _Oh **no.**_

 “Right then.” That settled it didn’t it, strewth but he felt like a right **bastard.** How did it take him this long to-? No, not going to dwell on it, from here on they work together. He stood with an “ooph,” still feeling the ache of the cold on his old bones, and gave the ground beneath them a double tap to open an exit. If he got an ice pick in his back for this he’d reckon that’d be right, and deserved, but looking down at Jack still on the floor, all confused and watching him without that cocky smile for the first time since this mess between them started, he didn’t think he had to worry. “Well?” He held his hand out again, smirking when Jack jolted, “ye coming?”

 He really did like the feel of those cold fingers, he should probably tell Jack that, sometime soon maybe, but right there he just enjoyed the way they slid into his palm. 

 


End file.
